SSH_CONFIG(5) | File Formats Manual | SSH_CONFIG(5) |
ssh_config
—
~/.ssh/config |
/etc/ssh/ssh_config |
For each parameter, the first obtained value will be used. The configuration files contain sections separated by “Host” specifications, and that section is only applied for hosts that match one of the patterns given in the specification. The matched host name is the one given on the command line.
Since the first obtained value for each parameter is used, more host-specific declarations should be given near the beginning of the file, and general defaults at the end.
The configuration file has the following format:
Empty lines and lines starting with
‘#
’ are comments. Otherwise a line is
of the format “keyword arguments”. Configuration options may
be separated by whitespace or optional whitespace and exactly one
‘=
’; the latter format is useful to
avoid the need to quote whitespace when specifying configuration options
using the ssh
, scp
, and
sftp
-o
option. Arguments
may optionally be enclosed in double quotes (") in order to represent
arguments containing spaces.
The possible keywords and their meanings are as follows (note that keywords are case-insensitive and arguments are case-sensitive):
Host
Host
keyword) to be only for those hosts that
match one of the patterns given after the keyword. If more than one
pattern is provided, they should be separated by whitespace. A single
‘*
’ as a pattern can be used to
provide global defaults for all hosts. The host is the
hostname argument given on the command line (i.e.
the name is not converted to a canonicalized host name before matching).
A pattern entry may be negated by prefixing it with an
exclamation mark (‘!’). If a negated entry is matched,
then the Host
entry is ignored, regardless of
whether any other patterns on the line match. Negated matches are
therefore useful to provide exceptions for wildcard matches.
See PATTERNS for more information on patterns.
AddressFamily
BatchMode
BindAddress
UsePrivilegedPort
is set to
“yes”.ChallengeResponseAuthentication
CheckHostIP
Cipher
Ciphers
aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128, aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes192-cbc, aes256-cbc,arcfour
ClearAllForwardings
Compression
CompressionLevel
ConnectionAttempts
ConnectTimeout
ControlMaster
ControlPath
argument. Additional sessions can
connect to this socket using the same ControlPath
with ControlMaster
set to “no” (the
default). These sessions will try to reuse the master instance's network
connection rather than initiating new ones, but will fall back to
connecting normally if the control socket does not exist, or is not
listening.
Setting this to “ask” will cause ssh to listen
for control connections, but require confirmation using the
SSH_ASKPASS
program before they are accepted
(see ssh-add(1) for details). If the
ControlPath
cannot be opened, ssh will continue
without connecting to a master instance.
X11 and ssh-agent(1) forwarding is supported over these multiplexed connections, however the display and agent forwarded will be the one belonging to the master connection i.e. it is not possible to forward multiple displays or agents.
Two additional options allow for opportunistic multiplexing: try to use a master connection but fall back to creating a new one if one does not already exist. These options are: “auto” and “autoask”. The latter requires confirmation like the “ask” option.
ControlPath
ControlMaster
section above or
the string “none” to disable connection sharing. In the
path, ‘%L
’ will be substituted by
the first component of the local host name,
‘%l
’ will be substituted by the
local host name (including any domain name),
‘%h
’ will be substituted by the
target host name, ‘%n
’ will be
substituted by the original target host name specified on the command
line, ‘%p
’ the port,
‘%r
’ by the remote login username,
and ‘%u
’ by the username of the user
running ssh(1). It is recommended that any
ControlPath
used for opportunistic connection
sharing include at least %h, %p, and %r. This ensures that shared
connections are uniquely identified.ControlPersist
ControlMaster
,
specifies that the master connection should remain open in the background
(waiting for future client connections) after the initial client
connection has been closed. If set to “no”, then the master
connection will not be placed into the background, and will close as soon
as the initial client connection is closed. If set to “yes”,
then the master connection will remain in the background indefinitely
(until killed or closed via a mechanism such as the
ssh(1) “-O
exit” option). If set to a time in seconds,
or a time in any of the formats documented in
sshd_config(5), then the backgrounded master connection
will automatically terminate after it has remained idle (with no client
connections) for the specified time.DynamicForward
The argument must be
[bind_address:]port. IPv6
addresses can be specified by enclosing addresses in square brackets. By
default, the local port is bound in accordance with the
GatewayPorts
setting. However, an explicit
bind_address may be used to bind the connection to
a specific address. The bind_address of
“localhost” indicates that the listening port be bound for
local use only, while an empty address or ‘*’ indicates
that the port should be available from all interfaces.
Currently the SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 protocols are supported, and ssh(1) will act as a SOCKS server. Multiple forwardings may be specified, and additional forwardings can be given on the command line. Only the superuser can forward privileged ports.
EnableSSHKeysign
HostbasedAuthentication
. The argument must be
“yes” or “no”. The default is
“no”. This option should be placed in the non-hostspecific
section. See ssh-keysign(8) for more information.EscapeChar
~
’). The escape character can also
be set on the command line. The argument should be a single character,
‘^
’ followed by a letter, or
“none” to disable the escape character entirely (making the
connection transparent for binary data).ExitOnForwardFailure
ForwardAgent
Agent forwarding should be enabled with caution. Users with the ability to bypass file permissions on the remote host (for the agent's Unix-domain socket) can access the local agent through the forwarded connection. An attacker cannot obtain key material from the agent, however they can perform operations on the keys that enable them to authenticate using the identities loaded into the agent.
ForwardX11
DISPLAY
set. The argument
must be “yes” or “no”. The default is
“no”.
X11 forwarding should be enabled with caution. Users with the
ability to bypass file permissions on the remote host (for the user's
X11 authorization database) can access the local X11 display through the
forwarded connection. An attacker may then be able to perform activities
such as keystroke monitoring if the
ForwardX11Trusted
option is also enabled.
ForwardX11Timeout
ForwardX11Trusted
If this option is set to “no”, remote X11 clients will be considered untrusted and prevented from stealing or tampering with data belonging to trusted X11 clients. Furthermore, the xauth(1) token used for the session will be set to expire after 20 minutes. Remote clients will be refused access after this time.
The default is “no”.
See the X11 SECURITY extension specification for full details on the restrictions imposed on untrusted clients.
GatewayPorts
GatewayPorts
can be used to
specify that ssh should bind local port forwardings to the wildcard
address, thus allowing remote hosts to connect to forwarded ports. The
argument must be “yes” or “no”. The default is
“no”.GlobalKnownHostsFile
GSSAPIAuthentication
GSSAPIDelegateCredentials
HashKnownHosts
HostbasedAuthentication
RhostsRSAAuthentication
.HostKeyAlgorithms
ecdsa-sha2-nistp256-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp384-cert-v01@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp521-cert-v01@openssh.com, ssh-rsa-cert-v01@openssh.com,ssh-dss-cert-v01@openssh.com, ssh-rsa-cert-v00@openssh.com,ssh-dss-cert-v00@openssh.com, ecdsa-sha2-nistp256,ecdsa-sha2-nistp384,ecdsa-sha2-nistp521, ssh-rsa,ssh-dss
If hostkeys are known for the destination host then this default is modified to prefer their algorithms.
HostKeyAlias
HostName
%h
’, then this
will be replaced with the host name specified on the command line (this is
useful for manipulating unqualified names). The default is the name given
on the command line. Numeric IP addresses are also permitted (both on the
command line and in HostName
specifications).IdentitiesOnly
ssh_config
files,
even if ssh-agent(1) or a
PKCS11Provider
offers more identities. The
argument to this keyword must be “yes” or
“no”. This option is intended for situations where ssh-agent
offers many different identities. The default is “no”.IdentityFile
IdentityFile
.
The file name may use the tilde syntax to refer to a user's
home directory or one of the following escape characters:
‘%d
’ (local user's home
directory), ‘%u
’ (local user
name), ‘%l
’ (local host name),
‘%h
’ (remote host name) or
‘%r
’ (remote user name).
It is possible to have multiple identity files specified in
configuration files; all these identities will be tried in sequence.
Multiple IdentityFile
directives will add to the
list of identities tried (this behaviour differs from that of other
configuration directives).
IPQoS
KbdInteractiveAuthentication
KbdInteractiveDevices
KexAlgorithms
ecdh-sha2-nistp256,ecdh-sha2-nistp384,ecdh-sha2-nistp521, diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256, diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1, diffie-hellman-group14-sha1, diffie-hellman-group1-sha1
LocalCommand
%d
’ (local user's home directory),
‘%h
’ (remote host name),
‘%l
’ (local host name),
‘%n
’ (host name as provided on the
command line), ‘%p
’ (remote port),
‘%r
’ (remote user name) or
‘%u
’ (local user name).
The command is run synchronously and does not have access to the session of the ssh(1) that spawned it. It should not be used for interactive commands.
This directive is ignored unless
PermitLocalCommand
has been enabled.
LocalForward
GatewayPorts
setting. However, an explicit
bind_address may be used to bind the connection to a
specific address. The bind_address of
“localhost” indicates that the listening port be bound for
local use only, while an empty address or ‘*’ indicates that
the port should be available from all interfaces.LogLevel
MACs
hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,umac-64@openssh.com,umac-128@openssh.com, hmac-sha2-256,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-ripemd160, hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96
NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost
NumberOfPasswordPrompts
PasswordAuthentication
PermitLocalCommand
LocalCommand
option or using the !
command
escape sequence in ssh(1). The argument must be
“yes” or “no”. The default is
“no”.PKCS11Provider
Port
PreferredAuthentications
keyboard-interactive
) over another method (e.g.
password
). The default is:
gssapi-with-mic,hostbased,publickey, keyboard-interactive,password
Protocol
ssh
will try
version 2 and fall back to version 1 if version 2 is not available. The
default is ‘2’.ProxyCommand
%h
’ will be substituted by the host
name to connect, ‘%p
’ by the port,
and ‘%r
’ by the remote user name.
The command can be basically anything, and should read from its standard
input and write to its standard output. It should eventually connect an
sshd(8) server running on some machine, or execute
sshd -i
somewhere. Host key management will be
done using the HostName of the host being connected (defaulting to the
name typed by the user). Setting the command to “none”
disables this option entirely. Note that
CheckHostIP
is not available for connects with a
proxy command.
This directive is useful in conjunction with nc(1) and its proxy support. For example, the following directive would connect via an HTTP proxy at 192.0.2.0:
ProxyCommand /usr/bin/nc -X connect -x 192.0.2.0:8080 %h %p
PubkeyAuthentication
RekeyLimit
RemoteForward
If the port argument is
‘0
’, the listen port will be
dynamically allocated on the server and reported to the client at run
time.
If the bind_address is not specified,
the default is to only bind to loopback addresses. If the
bind_address is
‘*
’ or an empty string, then the
forwarding is requested to listen on all interfaces. Specifying a remote
bind_address will only succeed if the server's
GatewayPorts
option is enabled (see
sshd_config(5)).
RequestTTY
-t
and -T
flags for
ssh(1).RhostsRSAAuthentication
RSAAuthentication
SendEnv
AcceptEnv
in sshd_config(5) for
how to configure the server. Variables are specified by name, which may
contain wildcard characters. Multiple environment variables may be
separated by whitespace or spread across multiple
SendEnv
directives. The default is not to send any
environment variables.
See PATTERNS for more information on patterns.
ServerAliveCountMax
TCPKeepAlive
(below). The server alive
messages are sent through the encrypted channel and therefore will not be
spoofable. The TCP keepalive option enabled by
TCPKeepAlive
is spoofable. The server alive
mechanism is valuable when the client or server depend on knowing when a
connection has become inactive.
The default value is 3. If, for example,
ServerAliveInterval
(see below) is set to 15 and
ServerAliveCountMax
is left at the default, if
the server becomes unresponsive, ssh will disconnect after approximately
45 seconds. This option applies to protocol version 2 only.
ServerAliveInterval
StrictHostKeyChecking
TCPKeepAlive
The default is “yes” (to send TCP keepalive messages), and the client will notice if the network goes down or the remote host dies. This is important in scripts, and many users want it too.
To disable TCP keepalive messages, the value should be set to “no”.
Tunnel
TunnelDevice
The argument must be local_tun[:remote_tun]. The devices may be specified by numerical ID or the keyword “any”, which uses the next available tunnel device. If remote_tun is not specified, it defaults to “any”. The default is “any:any”.
UsePrivilegedPort
RhostsRSAAuthentication
with older servers.User
UserKnownHostsFile
VerifyHostKeyDNS
StrictHostKeyChecking
option. The argument must be
“yes”, “no”, or “ask”. The
default is “no”. Note that this option applies to protocol
version 2 only.
See also VERIFYING HOST KEYS in ssh(1).
VisualHostKey
XAuthLocation
Host *.co.uk
The following pattern would match any host in the 192.168.0.[0-9] network range:
Host 192.168.0.?
A pattern-list is a comma-separated list of patterns. Patterns within pattern-lists may be negated by preceding them with an exclamation mark (‘!’). For example, to allow a key to be used from anywhere within an organisation except from the “dialup” pool, the following entry (in authorized_keys) could be used:
from="!*.dialup.example.com,*.example.com"
December 2, 2012 | BSD |